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A former Somali colonel who moved to Columbus a decade ago said he never tortured a man who has
sued him in federal court, claiming the mistreatment.

"I knew nothing about it and certainly did not authorize it," Abdi Aden Magan said in an
affidavit filed with his motion late Friday to dismiss the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in
Columbus.

Abukar Ahmed, a British resident, sued Magan in April, saying that Magan ordered his detention
and torture more than two decades ago.

Pete Ezanidis, one of Magan's attorneys, said yesterday that the suit was filed too late because
the federal Torture Victims Protection Act has a 10-year statute of limitations.

The motion also says decades of judicial decisions bar federal courts from exercising authority
over officials from other countries for their actions.

"The basic argument is that these foreign officials enjoy this common law immunity," Ezanidis
said.

But Andrea Evans, an attorney for Ahmed, pointed to a recent unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling
that said that although nations are protected from lawsuits under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities
Act, individuals are not.

That act involves a torture case that Somali victims filed against Mohamed Ali Samantar, who
served as vice president, defense minister and prime minister under former dictator Mohamed Siad
Barre from 1980 to 1990. Samantar now lives in Virginia.

Evans, legal director for the Center for Justice & Accountability in San Francisco, said
Ahmed's suit was filed within the 10-year time period because Magan moved to the United States in
May 2000.

"That's when we think the clock started to run," she said.

She also found it noteworthy that in his affidavit, Magan acknowledged that he served as chief
of investigations for the National Security Services under Barre from 1988 to 1990.

Magan, however, said he had no authority to detain Ahmed.

He said he was forced to resign his position in the Barre government around November 1990 and
fled to Kenya as a refugee in 1991 after the government collapsed.

He said both of his children were killed by members of Ahmed's Hawiye clan, a rival to Magan's
Darod clan. Magan, 58, and a former Kroger bakery worker, remarried in 2005 and now has two young
children, according to his other attorney, Jeff Donnellon.

Magan said that many of the witnesses and documents relevant to his case are in Somalia.

Ahmed needed to exhaust his legal remedies in Somalia or Somaliland, an autonomous northern
region of Somalia that has a functioning government and court system, Magan's attorneys said.

In his suit, Ahmed, a law professor and outspoken critic of the Barre regime, said three
National Security Services officers took him into custody on Nov. 20, 1988, and placed him in
solitary confinement. The suit said the officers were under Magan's command.

Ahmed was detained for three months, the suit said. On Feb. 8, 1989, two non-commissioned
officers tortured him, squeezing his testicles with iron instruments and forcing a 5-liter
container of sand, stones and water into his mouth.